On War, Hate and Violence
by Daniil Kalinov
This blogpost is partially based on the article, which the author of the present text wrote in Russian on February 24th, when the Russian troops invaded Ukraine. It also integrates into itself the themes, which the “Knowing Christ” students have discussed with Rev. Patrick Kennedy during the course on “The Fifth Gospel and the Way of Jesus”.
There are many works of art that can be called “anti-war”. It seems that every major conflict in the 20th century brought together with it a host of films, books, poems and musical pieces that would like to help digest such a traumatic experience. Their goal is to understand why such a terrible event could happen, how could we make meaning of it, and what can be done so that it doesn’t repeat itself. And, as the current events show, we still have a long way to go before we can reach satisfactory answers to such questions. So, in this essay, I would like to share my thoughts on these topics, starting with one particular “anti-war” film. This film is “Come and See” by Elem Klimov. It depicts, in an almost hyperrealistic style, the atrocities that have happened to the civilians in Belarus under Nazi occupation. And at first it can seem that this is what the film aims to do: to simply confront the viewer with the reality of these events. However, what reveals the true genius of the director is the final scene, which goes far beyond recreating the events in a documentary fashion. And this scene is what I would like to zero in on.
During the whole film, we experience the passing events through the eyes and ears of the main character – a teenager named Flyora. Together with him, we witness all the horrors of life in the occupied Belarus, culminating with the burning of the whole village. We feel how anger and hate grow in his soul as a result of what he undergoes. Just before the last scene of the film, we also observe him becoming a witness to how the partisans deal with the captured Nazis and release their anger in violence. And then Flyora sees a portrait of “Hitler the Liberator” lying in the ditch. He raises his rifle, which he hadn’t yet used during the entire film, and shoots at the picture of him, whom he understands to be the source of all evil, which poured into his land. It is as though he sets his heart on erasing Hitler out of existence, and all the events that occurred because of him together with it. And this is what starts to happen. Suddenly, the film breaks the normal chain of events, and we see the documentary footage of the 20th century events in rewind. Each time the figure of Hitler appears in the chronicles, Flyora shoots again. And each shot takes us further and further back in the life of Hitler. First we see the scenes of the second world war, then his rising to power in post-war Germany, his service in the German army during the first world-war, his youth, and, finally, a photo of his mother holding a young child in her hands. Here Flyora stops, he can not take a shot. The camera zooms in on his face. His countenance appears as though a deeper, fearful truth was revealed to him, and tears start to flow from his eyes. He looks into the camera, into our eyes. It is as though he would want to imprint this revelation onto our souls as well.
Picture of Adolf Hitler
What did he realize? How did it change him? And can it also change us? To me, it seems that this realization has to do with the question concerning the source of evil in the world. At first, Flyora was gripped with the certainty that Hitler is the cause of all the pain and suffering he witnessed. However, going back through Hitler’s whole biography, he found an innocent-looking child. A child, which doesn’t seem to be predestined or pre-inclined towards evil, any more than any other child in the world. This realization, that no man is inherently a source of evil, can at the same time fill a human heart with horror and hope. With horror, because it takes away the hope of defeating evil in the outward way. Indeed, when we are confronted with evil the first, natural reaction is to isolate, punish or destroy the evil-doer. While we believe that the evil-doer is the origin of evil, we also believe that by destroying him, we could destroy the evil itself. But once we see that this is not so, we lose the aim for our anger and discontentment. Instead of being embodied in a particular person, the evil now lurks around us like a terrible ghost. All the tools we had in our hands to fight it dissolve into dust. But among the darkness and fear such a realization can plunge us in, we can start to feel the glimmer of true hope. The old way of dealing with evil shows its impotence, but was it solving the problem anyway? When we were filled with hatred and used violence against “the evil person”, what was happening to our own heart? Were we not becoming the source of the same evil we tried to fight? But now, realizing the fundamental problem of this method, we have the hope of discovering an approach that actually might work. However, to find this other approach, we first need to reach a truer answer to the core question – what the source of evil actually is? What are we fighting with?
Here the common use of words in our contemporary culture can be of use. It often happens that in order to discredit or to condemn a certain person, people, nowadays, compare him or her with Hitler. One can even see how sometimes both sides of the same conflict call each other’s leaders with the name of Führer. It is certainly the case that we connect this name with the utmost evil, with irrational hate, cold-blooded murder and all kinds of war crimes. But how much of the real historical Adolf Hitler do we mean when we use his name almost as a curse? Are we much more using it as a placeholder for “the person capable of the most horrible actions”? When we compare someone with Hitler don’t we see the same mode of thinking, the same sentiments, the same pattern of acting in them? And so it becomes clear that what we really point to in such instances is that they share the same spirit. They embody the same archetype. We may have seen this archetype expressed in the clearest way in such personalities as Hitler, and so come to attach their personality to them. But this spirit, by its very nature, possesses an ideal existence, and so every human being has their share in it. It is for this reason that Elem Klimov has initially given a different title to his film. It was – “To Kill Hitler”. But, as the film shows, this can not be done in an external way. Later, Klimov himself has said that what he meant by it is the need to, primarily, kill “Hitler” within ourselves. To stop that spirit from laying hold of our own soul.
But, still, how am I to fight it? Now I see how, when I confront violence and hatred in the world, the same spirit that inspired them reaches into my heart to awaken hatred and condemnation within me. I know that by following the urge to answer violence with violence, I become a puppet of the same monster. Once I truly realize that, the anger and hate in me run out of fuel. But what they leave behind is utter helplessness. I see humanity in its weakness, its total impotence to stop the evil raging in the world. This spirit was here before each one of us. It is much stronger than any individual. How then can I condemn those who succumb to it? And is there anything within me that could oppose it? It seems that the only thing left to me is to be a witness to this world-tragedy.
And what if there is actually nothing else one can do about it all out of one’s own power? This is, at least, an answer, which Rudolf Steiner’s lecture cycle under the title “The Fifth Gospel” seems to give us. In these lectures, Steiner is shedding a bit of light on that part of Jesus’s life, which the other Gospels almost entirely omit. He describes what kind of experiences Jesus had to have to be ready for the Baptism in the Jordan. The path he had to take to become the vehicle of the Christ. And this path proves to be one filled with suffering and helplessness.
We hear how during his youth, Jesus encountered different religious-spiritual streams, which were trying to help mankind find their way back to the divine. And in each case he came to the same conclusion: their attempts are fruitless. Even more than fruitless – they have actually become the tools of the evil spirits that prey on humanity. He saw how every attempt to lift humankind out of the Fall only led it further down. More than that, he also understood that neither he nor any other human beings could do anything about it. And in the midst of this utmost helplessness and loneliness, the spirit of Christ descended on him. The only thing he was able to do was to become the true witness to the state of humankind, no matter how much it had hurt him. But this witnessing became a prayer, a cry of help to the World-spirit. And someone much loftier than Jesus came to help. Can he also come to our aid? We can, at least, ask for that out of the powerlessness we find ourselves in. We can do the only thing left for us – pray. And perhaps one can feel the grace of such a prayer being answered. One can start sensing the rays of compassion which stream into the tragedy that one is witnessing. And one’s heart can start to participate in their activity. Until, finally, love is born within this heart. Love, which one has not produced, but which was given through pure grace.
And this love is the only thing that can prevail against the spirit of hate, violence and evil. It is not a weapon, which can be used to outwardly attack it. It is a creative force that fashions reality, which is much fuller and stronger than anything hate can produce. After all, it is Christ, the spirit of love, who has already won the fight for us. And he gives his love as a free gift to anyone who really asks him, who stretches his entire being towards it. Both love and hate have a capacity to spread themselves in the world. The actions that are full of love soften and open the human heart, so that it too can receive love into itself. Hateful and violent actions ignite hate in return. But hate ultimately seeks to destroy itself. Its fruits are meaninglessness and death. Love, however, creates true life and gives meaning to everything, even death. What gives us nourishment, when we look into the darkness of history? It is the stories of love, forgiveness, self-sacrifice that really feed our soul, not the tales of hate, revenge or violence. And the darker the circumstances, the more radiant is the light of this love. Hate can not survive the test of time, it perishes into nothingness; but love remains eternally.
Group painting by students of the “Knowing Christ” program
Of course, it would be utopian to imagine that humanity could just abandon all violence in one moment. In certain situations, where violence is used, there seems to be no other way to respond except with some degree of violence. When people close to me are under threat of physical destruction, it appears necessary to use physical force to eliminate this danger. But even in such situations, let us be conscious of the spirit we are allowing to enter into our conduct. Let us not embrace violence as something good or exemplary. But let us be aware of the tragedy of the fact that we have to use it at all, of the consequences it can lead to. This awareness itself can become the safeguard of using violence beyond the actual need. It leaves a free space in us, which can not become possessed by hate. A door for love to enter even in the midst of conflict.
And no matter what the circumstances are, there always is an opportunity for love to come into the world, one way or the other. Be it through a smile, a sentence of support or a truly understanding ear. Through our relationship with our friends, family and colleagues or through an offering before an altar. There always is a part of us we can lift up, so that the divine love can pour into us - and from us pour into the smallest of our deeds. So that out of them a new love-filled world is built by the careful hand of him, who orders our destiny. The world where there is no more war, hate, violence and suffering.
Our Author:
Daniil Kalinov is a student in the “Knowing Christ” program and a Greek teacher at the Seminary. He has also spent this fall in the Sister-Seminary in Stuttgart. Before his Seminary-journey, he studied and did research in the field of pure mathematics.
This is a blog entry by a student at The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. These are posted weekly by the student editorial team of Marc Delannoy and Silke Chatfield. For more information about our seminary, see the website: www.christiancommunityseminary.ca and for even more weekly podcast and video content check out the Seminary’s Patreon page: www.patreon.com/ccseminary/posts.
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